Gone too soon, Coco shut its doors in November after barely 18 months of serving its Vietnamese-inflected pan-Med food. The premises by the Royal Oak roundabout are now occupied by this newcomer, whose name means "delicious" in one of the Philippines' many regional languages.
It's the first venture on their own account by Filipino couple Jess Granada and Andrew Soriano, who honed their skills on the mainland (Saffron in Arrowtown; True South in Queenstown) before heading north to try their fortune.
They've been open barely eight weeks - the Coco signage is still on the roof - but there's a real buzz about the place, a sense of a young team working hard and purposefully on a genuinely original venture that Granada calls "going back to our own roots".
That does not mean a dogged and slavish adherence to tradition: far from it. The sour tamarind-based soup called sinagang, a Philippine standard, is replaced by a roast chicken dish which has many of the same ingredients.
Stripped and distressed walls, dominated by a paint-spattered mural, are part of a casual and down-home feel - there's a tip jar labelled "tip jar" on the counter - that makes the place most welcoming, though they may need to beef up the heating as winter bites.
The night our trio ate there, Soriano was in the kitchen and Granada, who is hands-on at prep time, was a gracious maitre d', explaining the dishes' composition and provenance, which added considerably to our enjoyment of an unfamiliar cuisine.
Philippine food is influenced by that of its near neighbours, Malay and Chinese, as well as the traditions of its Spanish colonisers - the name of relyenong squid, for example, reflects the rellenos (stuffed) dishes on Spanish menus. The Professor got terribly excited when she thought they'd named a dish in my honour until I explained that the stew called caldereta takes its name from the word for a big cooking pot.
That squid, as it happens, was the standout of several excellent dishes: stuffed with garlic sausage meat known as vigan longganisa, it fairly burst with rich, peasant flavours. But even the squid could not compete with the chicken hearts, slow cooked in a style called sisig, which seems to be reserved for offal.
The generous serving, which cost only $10, had notes of chilli and citrus, was both rich and tangy, and worked well as the base of crunchy lettuce wraps. It was one of several dishes on a make-your-own section of the entree menu - another was tortillas built around beef brisket - from which a cheap meal for two might easily be composed. Of the two pica-pica (finger food) dishes, we chose, croquettes of potato and lamb shoulder, the latter cooked in its garlic and vinegar marinade in the uniquely Philippine manner called "adobo". A dipping sauce of creme fraiche with Vietnamese mint smoothed the sharpness perfectly.
Fish cooked in banana leaf with curried lentils and beans was delicious and skirt steak, served very rare in slabs on a creamy salsa verde, was the best version I've yet tried of that often-chewy cut.
I have to admit that the desserts - we tried one of each - defeated all of us: the banana parfait with a jackfruit gel was pretty fine but the sensational sweetness of a dulce de leche eclair verged on the sickly. They are for serious sugar nuts only, I suspect, though I don't doubt they were well done.
But this didn't detract from an excellent meal that opened a window on a new foodie world. Recommended.
Starters $10-$12; mains $16-$25; sides $9; desserts $11
Verdict: Smart and original Philippine food.